Secular Theology as a Challenge for Jewish Atheists

EDITOR
Daniel R. Langton
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Simon Mayers
Title: Secular Theology as a Challenge for Jewish Atheists
Author(s): AVNER DINUR
Source: Melilah: Atheism, Scepticism and Challenges to Monotheism, Vol. 12 (2015),
pp. 131-144
Published by: University of Manchester and Gorgias Press
URL: http://www.melilahjournal.org/p/2015.html
ISBN: 978-1-4632-0622-2
ISSN: 1759-1953
A publication of the Centre for Jewish Studies,
University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Co-published by
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A
CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS
Avner Dinur*
ABSTRACT: This paper uses the term “secular theology” to criticize Jewish-religious approaches on
the one hand and atheism on the other hand. It shows that the assumption of many that atheism
stands at the centre of secular thought is baseless. The first part, largely assuming an Israeli context,
claims that this assumption is problematic from a sociological and historical perspective. The second
part follows Jewish philosophers who use theological ideas at the centre of their thought, and at the
same time do not fit into the realm of Jewish religious writing of the 20th century. The distinction
between the ontological and the ethical “role” of God in the theology of Hans Jonas, Emmanuel
Levinas and Martin Buber, is used to create new borderlines between the secular and the religious –
“soft” borders that do not exclude God from secular world-views.
This paper is a critique of a common secular approach that is based, I argue, on a
misunderstanding of religion in general and Jewish religion in particular. This approach,
which I call “naïve atheism,” claims that atheism is the main pillar of secular world-views,
and that through modern science we can see how ridiculous religious doctrines are,
understand that God does not exist, and thus recognize that we should struggle to push
religion into a dark corner of society. A deeper understanding of Jewish religion and
culture, I argue, will enable us to find a place for the belief in God within Jewish secular
world-views, and hence will promote a “secular theology.” This line of thinking is based on
the one hand on a strong critique of central religious beliefs, but on the other hand,
aspires to promote a better society on the basis of theological ideas that are inseparable
from Jewish thought throughout the generations.
The discussion, and a few of the definitions I will use for terms like “Jewish-secular
identity” (Zehut Yehudit Chilonit - ‫)זהות יהודית חילונית‬, or “Traditional Jews” (Mesorati’im –
‫)מסורתיים‬, is in general an Israeli one, and it builds upon the unique definitions of
secularism and religiousness found in Israel,1 but the thinkers I draw from, Hans Jonas,
Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber and others, are not necessarily Israeli, and the
conclusions, I hope, can be relevant for other readers – Jews in the diaspora, secular nonJews, and others. My suggestion is to read the Jewish philosophy of these thinkers under
the umbrella term “secular-theology,” and to use this concept as an analytical category by
Lecturer of Jewish Studies at Sapir College and Seminar-Hakibbutzim. Email: [email protected]
A previous version of this paper appeared in Hebrew in Akdamot 30 (2015): 65-76.
Many studies on this uniqueness can be found, including the studies in the following three collections: Yossi
Yonah and Yehuda Goodman, eds., Maelstrom of Identities: A Critical look at religion and Secularity in Israel [Hebrew]
(Tel Aviv: Van Leer & Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2004); Gideon Kats, Shlalom Ratzabi and Yaacov Yadgar, eds.,
Beyond Halacha: Secularism, Traditionalism and ‘New Age’ culture in Israel [Hebrew] (Sede Boker: Ben-Gurion University
Press, 2014); and the recent: Yochi Fischer, ed., Secularization and Secularism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives [Hebrew]
(Tel Aviv: Van Leer & Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2015).
*
1
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MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
which one can offer observations on the limits of atheist-secular Jewish identity on the one
hand and religious identity (both orthodox and reform) on the other.
Understanding secular identity as if it is based on atheism is very common and seems
obvious for many. Religion, they claim, means the belief in God, and if one is secular, one
should not believe in God or in the stories that religions present. In the English speaking
world one can hear this line of thinking from the well-known biologist Richard Dawkins,
who is sometimes referred to as “Darwin’s Rottweiler,” 2 for his aggressive attack on
“Creationist” religious thinking. In the Jewish world strong atheist statements are rarely
used by Jews in the diaspora, but in Israel they are quite common. In the Israeli context
one can hear them from atheists like Dan Meler, 3 Yaron Yad’an, 4 and others. One of
them, Dan Boneh, in his popular book The God Fallacy [Hebrew],5 refers to a poem by
Yehuda Amichai called “The Destiny of God,” in which the poet says that “God is destined
to stay with us.”6 Boneh, who seems not to understand the metaphoric and ironic depth of
the poem, presents a harsh critique which is worth reproducing here at length as a
representative example for naïve-atheist polemic:
This kind of Pilpul (empty talk - ‫ )פלפול‬is an example of the way secular people fall into the trap
that prolongs the concept of God – they insist on keeping it and using the concept for their own
benefit. “God is love,” “God is me,” “God is nature,” “God is eternity,” “God is the unity of
being” – and other definitions that secular people accept so they can create a God of their own.
[…] My approach in this book criticizes this tendency. God is a well-defined monotheistic
concept. For religious believers he is tangible and clear. Most of them will accept the definition
that we used, common to all monotheistic religions – “a super-natural being, wilful, creator of the
world and manager of the universe”. It is preferable that this definition will be used in the public
discourse as the basic definition of the concept, just like a dictionary definition and like the
definition that religious believers use.7
Boneh claims that secular Jews, who define the term “God” differently to him, are
cooperating with religious people and giving religion authority in a time when it should
have lost all its powers long ago. He thinks that if we persuade the multitudes that God
never existed (Lo Haia Velo Nivra - ‫)לא היה ולא נברא‬, as the title of his book in Hebrew shows,
we will promote a better society that is not worsened by the burden of religion. The
difficulty that Boneh encounters, and is evident in this quote, is that for many Jews
(Amichai among them), God does not conform to the easy-to-use definition that Boneh
suggests. For many Jews, both religious and secular, God is not the manager of the
universe and hence for them, the “scientific” and modern understanding of the world
does not lead to disbelief in God.
2 See Stephen S. Hall, “Darwin’s Rottweiler,” accessed 22 December 2015, http://discovermagazine.com/2005/sep
/darwins-rottweiler.
3 See many of Dan Meler’s articles, and other writers who use similar jargon, in the journal “‫(”יהדות חופשית‬Yahadut
Hofshit - free Judaism), and “‫( ”חופש‬Hofesh – freedom) website, accessed 22 December 2015, http://www.hofesh.org.il.
4 See website Daat-Emet (true knowledge, ‫)דעת אמת‬, accessed 22 December 2015, http://www.daatemet.org.il. See
also Yaron Yadan’s blog, accessed 22 December 2015, http://www.orr.org.il/wordpress.
5 Dan Boneh, The God Fallacy [Hebrew] (Bney Brak: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 2011). The title in Hebrew reads:
“‫ משנה אתאיסטית סדורה‬:‫( ”לא היה ולא נברא‬Lo haia velo nivra - Never Existed – A Well-Structured Atheist Doctrine).
According to the publishing house it is a best seller. The first two editions were each sold out in a month.
6 Yehudah Amichai, Achshav Bera’ash: Poems 1963-1968 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Shoken, 1968), 36.
7 Boneh, The God Fallacy, 265. Emphasis added.
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS (DINUR)
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Secularism is not Atheism - a sociological-historical perspective
The almost automatic identification that many make between secularism and atheism is
baseless. It is problematic from a theological-philosophical perspective as I will show later,
and it is just false if one looks at it from a sociological or historical perspective as I will
show now. Most surveys that articulate approaches to tradition and self-definition in Israel
during the last 30 years show that while about 50% of the Jews in Israel identify
themselves as “secular,” about 80% say that they believe in God, and an even larger
percentage say they participate in central practices of Jewish tradition – for example, 94%
circumcise their children, 91% have Bar or Bat Mitzva, 90% celebrate Seder-Pesach, and
82% light Chanukah candles. 8 From these numbers we can deduce that most secular
Israeli Jews (and here the focus is on Israeli society because away from Israel far fewer
Jews define themselves as secular) do believe in God and are committed to the ongoing
survival of Jewish tradition, and thus, at least according to self-definition, it is clear that for
a great majority of these secular Jews atheism and secularism are fundamentally distinct. It
is worth noting that the Gutman surveys that I draw upon, although they are very
extensive and seem to be well structured, are not consistent enough in their use of the
term “secular” – a few of these polls use the term “not religious” or even “anti-religious,”
but parallel polls, a few years later, use “traditional-secular,” and others “not observing the
Mitzvot.” These inconsistencies should not be seen simply as a sign of unprofessional
surveys – rather, they are a symptom of the inherent difficulty of pinning down Jewish
secular identity, and of finding unambiguous definitions for secular and religious in the
Jewish world in general and for Israeli-Jews in particular. This difficulty is unique to the
Jewish culture and it builds on the problematic combination of religion and nationhood.
Clear-cut definitions are indeed very hard to find, and even though in what follows I will
suggest a few new guidelines to differentiate between a religious and a secular approach, I
do not believe in the utility of such distinctions for future surveys. Here they serve a
different purpose.
Boneh and his atheist colleagues might claim that the majority of “secular believers”
who said in the polls that they are secular but do believe in God, have false ideas about
religion – for these people, who in most cases come from Mizrahi-traditional or
conservative families (Mesorati’im - ‫(מסורתיים‬, the belief in God is only a simple kind of
folklore and not a well-structured world-view. Traditional people say they are secular
because they do not understand the meaning of secularism, Boneh might claim. But this
kind of claim is evidently essentialist and tautological – it assumes that being secular means
not believing in God and therefore concludes that people who are seen by others and by
themselves as secular, but who say they do believe in God just do not understand what
they are saying.
8 Asher Arian and Ayala Keisar-shugerman, eds., Jewish-Israelis – a portrait: beliefs, tradition and values of Jews in Israel
2009 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Gutman surveys institute, the Israeli institute for Democracy and Avichai foundation,
2009). To give a broader perspective on the percentage of secular Jews in Israel, it is worth noting that this survey
articulated self-definition of Jews by the following definitions: 3% “Secular-Anti-Religious,” 43% “secular-not antireligious,” 32% “traditional or conservative” (Mesorati’im - ‫)מסורתיים‬, 15% “Religious,” 7% “Ultraorthodox.” (Charedim
– ‫)חרדים‬
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MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
God plays various roles in the belief systems of secular Jews. For some it is a source of
comfort in times of trouble, for others, a way to be humble, identifying a source of power
greater than one’s own, for others a stable basis that defines the demands of moral
obligations, and for others it is a sign of traditional commitment – being faithful to the
beliefs of ones foremothers and forefathers. Secular believers have various reasons to call
themselves “secular.” Most of these reasons have nothing to do with a negation of Boneh’s
definition – the idea of God as ruler of the universe. Most secular believers use a modern
and scientific understanding of the world, or at least they use its fruits, with technology
and scientific knowledge in their daily lives. From this observation one can deduce that
even if secular believers might say that the God they believe in is the ruler of the universe
– they seem not to act as if it is so. Since they “assign” a different role for God, it is easy for
them to find a place for their belief within a secular and scientific understanding of the
world, an understanding that they share with atheists like Boneh.
Secular theology, the line of thinking which will be theologically portrayed in the
second part of this paper, is an attempt to find a place for the belief in God within a
secular understanding of the world. Secular theology is sociologically preferable over
naïve-atheism because it is open to the majority of the Jewish public in Israel, which is
populated by “secular believers,” who see no appeal in the statements of Boneh and his
fellow atheists. Secular theology can include many kinds of “soft” religiosities, which can be
found, not only within secular, reform, and Mizrahi-traditional identities, but also within
orthodox Jews in Israel and within many Jews in the diaspora who don’t call themselves
“secular,” but follow similar patterns to the ones I just articulated. Secular theology can
include these identities without diminishing its secular criticism of major ideas within
religion, as I will show later. Most of these “soft religiosities” are not based on conscious
theological considerations. Secular theology can therefore contribute to their thinking by
articulating the pitfalls of religious theology in a way that the atheism of Boneh and his
colleagues just cannot – this is because the belief in God is a strong component of the
identity of many secular Jews.
***
The claim that secularism is a form of disbelief is also problematic from a historical
perspective. Atheists tend to negate or reject, not only the belief in God, but also other
symbols and practices that are associated with religion and with the past, including
theological ideas. For Jewish atheists the consequence of such a rejection is the need to
distant themselves from Jewish culture as a whole. Menachem Brinker, an eloquent
speaker for Jewish secularism and atheism, says that this rejection is not an easy task. It is a
constant struggle of the secular Jew against what he calls “the law of gravity” of Jewish
tradition:
The modern Jew cannot express his national loyalty or his Humanistic world-view without
using linguistic and other symbols which holds clear religious connotations. A Jew who insists
on being secular must therefore create his own language. He is in a constant struggle against
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS (DINUR)
135
the law of gravity that pulls him down to give-up his modern uniqueness for the sake of the
historical depth of an ancient identity.”9
Brinker describes this “law of gravity” in a paper called “Without any Doctrine,” a title that
emphasizes that for him Jewish secularism, as opposed to the Jewish religion, cannot hold
any obliging doctrine. Secularism for him means promoting the freedom of the individual
and therefore cannot oblige anyone to hold this or that world-view. According to Brinker,
the problem of many secular Jews is that they are not brave enough to stand in front of
modern reality without a doctrine and therefore they are pulled back to use the old ideas
of religion.
Jewish secular-atheists like Brinker find it hard to accept the great influence that Jewish
religion has on their culture, the Israeli culture in Brinker’s case, but also other Jewish
cultures around the world. In their view the problem of the modern Jew is that her
language is full of religious symbols and if she does not wish to simply abandon her Jewish
identity, she must always be “on the watch” from being pulled into religious identity. This
line of thinking is based on the idea that the Jewish past was religious. It is a very common
idea that seems obvious to many and I would like to challenge it in order to show that
Jewish theological ideas should not be seen as part of a religious past which secular Jews in
the present should reject. Many have claimed before me that Judaism is not only a religion
and that in the present it includes cultural and national elements too. My suggestion here
is more radical – it is not enough to say that Judaism is not only a religion. I think in the
past it was not a religion at all, and therefore it is wrong to state that Jewish secular
thinking is the breaking of the Jewish past. I will present three arguments to support this
claim:
The first is the unique combination of religion, nation, and ethnicity in the Jewish
culture. If one compares Judaism to Christianity (and this comparison is natural and even
needed in any analysis of secularism), in which religion is separated from nation and is
defined by what one believes and not by ones ethnic origin, than at least according to
Christian definitions, Judaism was never a religion at all. And from a more objective, not
necessarily Christian perspective, we can say that it was not a religion nor a national
identity; it was a combination of both – Jewish religion was defined in ethnic terms (Jewish
identity was defined not by what one believes in, but by the identity of one’s mother), and
Jewish nation was defined by religious definitions.10 We can say that European culture was
religious before the age of secularization because European Christians differentiated
between their religious identity and their political or cultural belonging. When European
society became more secular many Europeans gave up religious identity but their cultural
or national identity remained intact. For Jews this was not an option since for them giving
up their religious identity meant also the breaking of their cultural and national identity.
The content of their religion was cultural and national in the first place. The gravity that
Brinker mentioned was indeed very powerful for Jews but it was not a religion that pulled
them to stay close to their heritage. Europeans who were religious lost their religion with
9 Menachem Brinker, “Without any Doctrine: The Uniqueness of the Secular Jew,” in Ruvik Rosental (ed.), The
Root of Things: Another Look on Questions of People and Society [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 2005), 55-56.
10 This is clear in the Zionist era, with citizenship defined by religious definitions, like in the case of “the law of
return,” but signs of the same phenomena can also be traced in diasporic communities in which one could not be
part of the community without taking part in religious practices and beliefs, Spinoza for example.
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MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
secularization. Jews who were not religious, even if they wanted to distance themselves
from Judaism, even if they hated Jewish religion, were not able to do so.
It is interesting to note that the first Jews who claimed that Judaism should be seen as a
religion were not the orthodox Jews, who are keen today on using this idea. The reforms
used this idea for the first time in their efforts to find a place for themselves in the new
nation-states that grew near the end of the 19th century. It is within reform circles, in
Germany and the United States, that we find for the first time calls like: “We consider
ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community.” 11 This statement, that was
central in the rebellion of liberal Jews against traditional Jewish identity, and against
orthodoxy, became a major claim of orthodoxy itself in the present. When anti-Zionistultraorthodox reproduce this idea it still makes some sense, but when Zionist–orthodox
say Judaism is a religion one can hear the laugh of history behind their back.
The second reason why it is wrong to say that the Jewish past was religious is also
related to the confusing combination of religion and culture, but here I turn the gaze to
the inside of Jewish communities. Before modernization and secularization, in the “ghetto
way of living,” common to most Jewish communities in one form or another (the Melach of
North-African communities is another name for the same phenomena), Jewish identity
was formed by a combination of many factors which surrounded the individual from all
sides: Jews lived in a Jewish area, dressed as Jews, ate Jewish food, prayed as Jews, had
political rights and obligations that were unique to them, married only with Jews, and
were buried among Jews. Which of these factors is cultural and which is religious? It is
very hard to say, because the differentiation we use today between the secular and the
religious was not yet formed for the Jews of the ghetto. Only a few of these factors are
considered today as religious, or are solely practiced in the present by religious Jews.
Today we use different definitions for what we call “a religious Jew” - When 50% of Israeli
Jews defined themselves as secular they probably meant that they do not go frequently to
synagogue, or do not wear a kippah, or that they eat non-kosher food, or other “negative
definitions.” All these definitions are problematic and partial, but these are the definitions
people actually use to define their identity. It does not matter which of these definitions
one uses - none of them can capture the breadth of what was considered Jewish before
secularization. For example, if one thinks that a religious Jew is someone who wears a
kippah, then it should be clear that first, most Jews in the pre-modern world did not wear a
kippah (and so they were not religious according to this definition), and second, even if
they did, what they considered as Jewish and what we consider today as part of their
Jewish identity is far broader then this narrow definition. The same will apply for wider
and more complex attempts to differentiate the religious from the secular. Judaism was in
the past a broad and encompassing culture, and the part of this culture we today call
“religion” was relatively small. Jews of earlier times could not define their culture as
secular or “not religious” and they also did not have any reason to do so because the
differentiation between the religious and the secular did not occur to them. Jews before
secularization were indeed religious but their Jewish identity was secular, or at least most
of its components were parts of what we call today “secular Jewish identity.”
11 See the Pittsburgh declaration, accessed 29 December 2015, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism
/pittsburgh_program.html
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS (DINUR)
137
The third reason why it is wrong to see the Jewish past as a religious one, and to see
secular identity as a negation of this stable and well-structured past, is the structure of
modern orthodoxy. As we saw earlier, Brinker claimed that secular Jews should stand
guard against the gravity of religion if they do not want to fall prey to its attraction. But is
it true that secular identity is formed against a structured changeless religious identity?
From the moment secularism appeared in the western world, different religious
communities structured themselves in opposition to it. The term “orthodox” (“the right
belief” or “the right world-view,”) is the product of such a negation. People call their
thinking “the right belief” only when they understand themselves as a culture in struggle
which must define its identity in opposition to the others who are holding the wrong
beliefs. The term “Charedim” (“‫ )”חרדים‬as the common name for the ultraorthodox
communities, is another sign of the same move - by using this name Ultraorthodox Jews
admit that they are afraid, worried or anxious about the modern world in general, and
about Jewish secularization in particular. Orthodox Jews today tend to portray their
identity as if it was the authentic Judaism of the past, and as if liberal, reform, conservative
and secular Jews drew apart from this past, and hence, claim many Orthodox, the identity
of all non-Orthodox Jews is a negation of Orthodoxy and not an independent Jewish
identity. Brinker, although speaking from a secular perspective, accepts this allegation.
However not only secular Jews have to struggle against the gravity of Jewish religious
identity – orthodoxy on its part has to struggle against the gravity of secularization, and
this is why orthodox Jews took upon themselves slogans which are problematic and
without precedent in Jewish tradition, like the well-known saying of the Hatam Sofer
(1762-1839) – “‫( ”חדש אסור מן התורה‬Hadash Asur Min Hatorah – the new is prohibited by the
Torah) – a slogan that is seen by many as the founding idea of orthodox Judaism. 12 The
idea that “the new is forbidden” is in itself a very new idea which shows that laws of gravity
hold for both the Orthodox and the secular. Both sides need the other to validate their
own identity. Both sides draw different ideas from Jewish past, which was neither religious
nor secular.
The secular move should be seen as distancing oneself from specific elements in Jewish
past which are today considered by the secular Jew as religious. It is true that in the Jewish
past, the religious and the secular were fundamentally inseparable. It might also be true in
the present, and Brinker is right when he writes that secular Jews need to find a proper
secular language to fit their worldview. But contrary to him, I think the secular world-view
is not a struggle of the new against the ancient, but an effort to differentiate within the
Jewish past between elements that would fit secular thinking and elements that would not.
The main point of this paper is to show why the belief in God does not need to be part of
the past that the secular Jew rejects. It is true that Jewish tradition is in many ways
“theistic.” In the pre-secular world, belief in God was indeed part of the confusing Jewish
conglomerate of religion, culture and nation, but it does not follow that the belief in God,
or to be more precise, the belief in all the predicates that are associated with the concept of
God, are part of what we call today the religious way of thinking, and hence should be
rejected by secular Jews.
12 Moshe Samet, Chapters in the History of Orthodoxy [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2005), 19. The Hebrew title of
the book reads: “‫ פרקים בתולדות האורתודוקסיה‬:‫ ”החדש אסור מן התורה‬.
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MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
So far we have seen that understanding the secular world-view as if it is based on
atheism is problematic sociologically because most secular Jews (in Israel at least) do
believe in God, and it is problematic from a historical perspective because the rejection of
the belief in God as part of the Jewish “religious” past is based on the wrong observation
that the Jewish past was religious. People who identify the secular with atheism might
think that the defence of theism suggested here is part of an attempt to bring them back
closer to religion (Lehachzir bitshuva - ‫בתשובה‬-‫)להחזיר‬, or that it is as a defence of orthodox
ways of thinking. But in what follows, I will suggest that secular theology aims its critical
arrows not only towards the atheist but also towards the religious way of thinking.
Secularism is not Atheism: a theological-philosophical perspective
In what way does secular theology criticize religion? What is so “secular” about it? In order
to answer this, I will now suggest a theological-philosophical analysis of religion following
the words of the philosopher Hans Jonas:
The crisis of modern man – at least one aspect of it – can be put in these terms. Reason
triumphant through science has destroyed the faith in revelation, without, however, replacing
revelation in the office of guiding our ultimate choices. Reason disqualified itself from that
office, in which once it vied with religion, precisely when it installed itself, in the form of
science, as sole authority in matters of truth […] The situation is reflected in the failure of
contemporary philosophy to offer an ethical theory, i.e., to validate ethical norms as part of our
universe of knowledge. How are we to explain this vacuum?13
Jonas’s claim here is based on an observation, which can also be found in the works of
other thinkers like Emanuel Levinas and Martin Buber: religious tradition, within the
three monotheistic religions at least, took upon itself two very different roles. The first role
was ontological or scientific – religion explained what the world is, how it was formed and
how it functions. The other role was ethical, moral and practical - religion told us what we
should do. As we saw earlier, the ontological role is the main object of atheist criticism on
religion. In Boneh’s words, God is “a supernatural being, wilful, creator of the world and
manager of the universe.” Boneh overlooks the ethical role that religion “assigns” to God.
Atheists like Boneh thinks that in modernity science took the place of religion in the
ontological field, and following the words of Jonas, we can say that in this sense they are
absolutely right. Science indeed offers a much wider, coherent and opened-eyed approach
than the description of creation that can be found in the bible. Science also presents a
much less childish understanding of current reality than the expectation for divine
intervention that is supposed to fulfil our needs. Here, the thinkers I call “secular
theologians” and secular atheists stand on the same ground and criticise religious thinking
in the same way, But what happened in modernity to the other role that religion once
took upon itself – the ethical role? It is within the ethical field that secular theologians wish
13 Hans Jonas, “Contemporary Problems in Ethics from a Jewish Perspective,” in Philosophical Essays: From Ancient
Creed to Technological Man (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 168. The italics are Jonas’s.
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS (DINUR)
139
to take central ideas from the Jewish heritage and to use them in the secular age, an age
that is described by Jonas as suffering from a “moral vacuum.”
I propose the term “secular theology” for world-views in which God is not seen as the
ruler of the universe and is not expected to intervene in the course of history, but
nevertheless, do not neglect the idea of God as the basis for ethical discourse. Since secular
theologians put the concept of God at the centre of their thought and as the locus of the
ethical demand that is presented to humans, their thought finds itself between secular
ideas and religious ones. For this reason, if we wish to see the uniqueness of this kind of
thinking, some work of conceptual classification is needed; not a strict definition of who
can be a member of the secular theology “club,” but a broader differentiation between
secular and religious theology.
The term “secularism,” not used as referring to a historic period, but as a way of
thinking, is based on the assumption that the seculum, this world, is not the realm of God.
In this way secularism is indeed close to atheism, as they are both based on a negation, and
their negation points at a similar concept. But based on the differentiation between the
ontological and the ethical use of the concept God, we can now see that atheism and
secularism do not negate the same thing. The secular theologian does not seek Godly
intervention in times of trouble. She does however see God as a source of ethical demands.
Jonas and other secular theologians point at various reasons for the need in modern
times of a new discourse on ethics. One of the reasons is the technological age. From the
quote above we can discern that science never pretended to have any authority over moral
behaviour, but in his extensive writing on the imperative of responsibility in the
technological age, 14 Jonas shows that modern science did change the ethical field –
through the advancement of technology it gave humans a “quasi-God-like privilege” and
powers that are almost divine, and paradoxically, it did so at the same time when it eroded
the position of God as the supreme authority on the true and the good.15 Jonas believed
that the technological age requires a new ethical discourse and that parts of this discourse
rely on theological considerations.
Three major factors should be mentioned in addition to Jonas’s analysis of the modern
ethical vacuum – capitalism, postmodernism and nationality. For the purposes of this
paper it is sufficient to deal only briefly with each and no extensive discussion of them is
provided. I only want to consider the way these elements function on parallel tracks to
construct the ethical challenges of our time and the need for a stronger basis for the ethics
of the present and of the future.
When it comes to capitalism that can be described as the “religion” of caring only for
one’s self, its contribution to a modern ethical vacuum is quite obvious – capitalism does
not encourage a person to care for others. More than that, because the resources for
human living are limited, the main imperative of capitalism is in many cases to harm the
other in order to earn a little more for oneself.
Postmodern thinking also reduces the strength of ethics because it breaks the great
“isms” of modernity, and shows how these absolute values serve the ruling forces in
society. Postmodernism, with its relativistic tendencies, shows how these values that were
14 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984).
15 Jonas, Contemporary Problems in Ethics, 172.
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MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
supposed to lead our conduct, and were seen in the past as essential and universal, are
nothing but European ideas that help the West to control the world. Postmodernism and
its siblings – post-colonialism and multiculturalism – make us see truth as relative, and
shake the position of the good, which moral philosophy has sought through the ages.
Nationalism also threatens ethics. If ethics necessarily deals with universal imperatives,
as old Kant taught us, then national particularism is the opposite of such universal
demands. In the age of nationalism humans are expected, not to care for others, but only
for others like themselves. Martin Buber saw nationality as one of the main obstacles for
ethics and he phrases the tension between the two in theological terms:
The typical man of our times cannot believe in God anymore, but he cannot believe in himself
either, in the self that has no basis, so he believes in his wider self, in his people (or nation) as
the greatest being that can exist … and if there is no being greater than nations, no supreme
court above the decree of each nation, the result is that the nations and their rulers are fighting
among each other with all means until extinction.16
It is important to note that when I claim, following Jonas, Buber and others, that we live in
a time of an “ethical vacuum” that is connected to the disempowerment of religion by
science, capitalism, postmodernism and nationalism, I am not claiming that previous times
were better from a moral perspective. My assertion aims at articulating the challenges of
contemporary ethics and the sources of ethics for the future. It also does not follow that
secular theology must object to any form of nationalism, or postmodernism, and that it
should stick to the great “isms” of European Enlightenment. The thought of Emmanuel
Levinas provides a good example of theological ideas that are entwined with postmodern
ones. The works of “Rav Shagar” (Shimshon Gershon Rosenberg) provide another
example of a conscious combination of religious ethics and postmodern ideas. 17 Following
these two thinkers one might claim that through the acceptance of postmodern ideas the
secular theologian should be even more aware of the need for an absolute imperative. In
other words, it is not the case that although truth is relative we need to distinguish between
the good and the bad, but because it is so – we need an absolute good to stand as an
opposition to the relativity of truth, or in a more traditional way to put it:
)‫ יב‬,‫” אֱמֶ ת [יחסית] מֵ אֶ ֶרץ ִתצְ מָ ח וְ צֶ דֶ ק [מוחלט] ִמשָ מַ יִ ם נִ ְשקָ ף“ (תהילים פה‬.
(Relative) truth springs from the earth, And (absolute) righteousness is seen in heaven” (Ps. 85,
12).
Buber and Jonas are good examples (though in different ways) of a national (Zionist)
commitment that is combined with secular theology. It is clear from these examples that
secular theology’s concern with the ethical vacuum does not necessarily exclude all causes
of this vacuum. It does lead secular theologians to look for the sources of ethical claims
16 Martin Buber, Spirit and Reality: Nine Gates to Discuss their Relations [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Machbarot Lesifrut,
1942), 23.
17 Shimon Gershon Rosenberg [Rav Shagar], The Remainder of Faith: Postmodern Sermons on Jewish Holidays
[Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Resling, 2014). Shagar is mentioned here as an example of a combination of theocentric
thinking and postmodernism. I do not see him as a secular theologian.
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS (DINUR)
141
within the religious field and to try and promote more responsibility-taking in secular
societies, using theistic ideas.
Atheists might claim that the democratic mechanisms on the one hand, and Humanistic
values on the other hand, are sufficient replacements for the ethical field, and that these
modern values and mechanisms make religion redundant. But is it really the case? Is the
democratic mechanism enough to cover the human need for ethics? Do we actually wish
that people behave according to the law and not pass moral judgment on the law?
Humanistic values seems to be a stronger answer then democracy for the modern ethical
vacuum, and indeed if we examine the works of Jonas, Buber, Levinas and other secular
theologians, we will probably conclude that humanistic values stand at the centre of their
theistic worldviews. It makes sense than, to ask if humanistic values are unique to secular
world-views or perhaps religions in general, and Jewish religion in particular has always
believed in these values and the only real difference between traditional works that
promote these values and humanistic discourse is that tradition see’s humanism as the
demand of God.
If we examine secular approaches that we usually refer to as “Humanistic,” that are
neither nihilist nor relativist, we see that while in the ontological field they contradict the
traditional religious approach and use scientific understanding of the world, in the ethical
field the contradiction is not great. A non-nihilist secular approach seeks to do “the good”
and assumes that this kind of good is not part of reality. Goodness is needed because we
want to change reality into this good. This view is even clearer in times when reality lacks
any kind of good, and our post-Holocaust thinking cannot ignore this.18 In this way the
non-nihilist-secular approach resembles the idea of a transcendent God who defines the
good that we need to aspire to, but does not intervene to change the world into this good.
The non-nihilist-secular thinker claims that humans in general, and she in particular, has
a role in this world and a responsibility to fulfil this highly demanding role. The main
difference between this role and the commandments of Jewish religion is that for secular
people divine reward or punishment is not expected as a consequence of their obedience
since they don’t believe in a God that is able to respond to their actions. We can claim
than, that secular people believe in God just as much as their religious counterparts, the
difference between them is that secular people believe in a God who is not the ruler of the
universe.
More than any other thinker, Jonas’s call to see God as powerless after Auschwitz, can
illustrate this move. Jonas is using an existential vocabulary to pin down the need of our
society for a new ethics that would be based on “the myth of God’s Being in the world”;19
in other words, like Heidegger and other existentialists, Jonas claims that humans are
“beings in the world” who finds themselves thrown choicelessly into the world, but
contrary to these existentialists, he does not conclude from this that humans are free to
create their world. Jonas says that humans must acknowledge that this world is not theirs,
that God is (in a way) part of the world, and that the myth of God assigns a role for them a role which they did not choose, a role that can be articulated by understanding the great
18 For a detailed discussion of Jonas’s and Levinas’s work as responses to the Holocaust, see Avner Dinur, Judaism
and Universalism in the Thought of Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas [Hebrew] (Ph.D dissertation, Ben-Gurion University,
2010), ch. 4.
19 Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice,” in Mortality and Morality: A Search for the
Good after Auschwitz, ed. Lawrence Vogel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 134.
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MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
order of things. Jonas does not deny that for him God is “a myth,” i.e. not part of an
objective scientific understanding of the world, but he believes that this myth is very much
needed as a basis for human conduct.
Is it true that God never existed, “‫( ”לא היה ולא נברא‬Lo Haia Velo Nivra), as Boneh and
other atheists claim? Secular theology, as a gathering of ideas from the philosophers
mentioned above and others, “declares” that God, portrayed as the ruler of the universe,
indeed never existed; but it also declares that God’s non-existence does not necessarily
lead to the conclusion that God is unimportant, and that God’s decrees should have no
authority over us. A culture that is based only on the things that exist is easily drawn into
taking what is as the only possibility, and into not being critical about reality. This critical
analysis of modern reality stands at the centre of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy and his
call to put less weight on ontological considerations, and to see the ethical as “first
philosophy.” Levinas articulated what he saw as the basic misunderstanding of Jewish
atheism in the following way:
[Atheism] would also be the healthiest response for all those who until now have believed in a
rather primitive God who awards prizes, imposes sanctions, or pardons mistakes, and who, in
his goodness, treats people like perpetual children. But what kind of limited spirit, what kind of
strange magician did you project as the inhabitant of your heaven – you who today state that
heaven is deserted? And why are you still looking, beneath an empty heaven, for a world that
makes sense and is good?20
Like Levinas, we can assert that the problem with naïve atheists is not that their critique of
religion is too harsh, but that they do not understand religion in general and Jewish
religion in particular. They use a primitive and pagan view of religion and in the name of
this view negates a whole range of traditional aspects of Judaism. That is why the term
“naïve,” used throughout this paper, is appropriate for this kind of atheism. In order to
define atheism as an opposition to religion, atheists see in religion only narrowmindedness, and in religious people they see blind followers of corrupted rabbis. I am not
claiming that there are no corrupted rabbis, but rather that by seeing religion as a whole
through this perspective, one misses a great deal of what religions have to offer the
modern world.
Moreover, the attempt of atheists to undermine religion’s power by showing how
ridiculous the belief in God is, plays into the hands of different streams in current
orthodoxy (Chabad is an obvious example, but other streams follow the same pattern)
which stress the centrality of faith in Jewish tradition. By trying to confront their attempts
to bring more Jews into their ranks (Lehachzir Bitshuva, ‫)להחזיר בתשובה‬, atheists assume that
the question of whether God exists is the central pillar of Jewish understanding of the
world. A better understanding of Judaism will enable us to see that the main question Jews
struggled with throughout the ages (at least until Chasidism) was not what we should
believe in, but what should we do – Jewish thought is basically ethical.
I have tried to show in this paper that the critical role of secular thinking, in the Jewish
world of today in general, and in Israel in particular, is not to prove the non-existence of
20 Emmanuel Levinas, “To Love the Torah more than God,” in Zvi Colitz, Yossel Rakover Speaks to God: Holocaust
Challenges to Religious Faith,(Haboken, NJ: Ktab, 1995), 28.
SECULAR THEOLOGY AS A CHALLENGE FOR JEWISH ATHEISTS (DINUR)
143
God, or to persuade us to give-up any attribute of traditional Judaism solely because the
tradition is believed to be a religious one. Jewish tradition has included both religious and
secular components throughout the ages, and the ability to differentiate between these
components, is open to our time and to the generations that will follow. I suggested that
the theological component and the belief in God as an ethical demand, should not be left
solely for religious people as naïve-atheists argue, and that the differentiation between the
ontological and the ethical role of God enables us to criticize the moral vacuum of our time
and find within the traditional concept of God the basis for a better defined ethics.
The belief in God, throughout the ages, included a belief in an absolute good and in the
imperatives of that good – a belief that is very necessary in a time when truth has become
relative, and politics, through the great powers of nationalism on the one hand, and
capitalism on the other, seeks the good of the individual and the good of the nation, rather
than the good that God demands.
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